


Eat Your Vegetables

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-19
Updated: 2010-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 04:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John and Rodney attend the local Farmer's Market.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eat Your Vegetables

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dogeared](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogeared/gifts).



It wasn't that Rodney was averse to the idea of a Farmer's Market—food was always to be approved of, especially when it came in large quantities—it was just that he, personally, didn't see the point of attending one. They always started at an unconscionably early hour—practically Friday night, not Saturday morning—and really, why would he want to get out of bed at six just to go stare at a pile of earth-covered potatoes? It made far more sense to doze until ten thirty and them amble down the street to the little diner where someone would already have performed the vital, noble task of transforming said potatoes into delicious hash browns.

He made his argument against such early morning shenanigans quite eloquently—an argument which had the merits of logic, and sense, and the continuing presence of squishy, fat pillows in his life—but John employed his deadliest counter-attack (long, nimble fingers right where Rodney was most ticklish, and the promise of a very large Americano) and Rodney, it seemed, was defenceless against such fiendish things.

"I do not," he grumbled as they walked into the Market, hat jammed on his head because the rising sun promised heat and melanoma in equal measure, "see the point of this obsession of yours with dirt-covered root vegetables."

Over the top of his aviator sunglasses, Rodney could see both of John's eyebrows arching upwards. "Whole lot of possible Freud-based jokes in there, buddy."

"Ha!" Rodney said bitterly, not even the least bit amused, because he had been promised coffee and yet there was no coffee (_Later, Rodney_, John said, as if Rodney weren't wise to his coffee-baiting ways), just an ever increasing press of people around him and John looking all loose-limbed and happy, like inspecting a mound of giant Spanish onions was his idea of a good time. Rodney blinked as something occurred to him—he may not have thought out this analogy properly. "Wait. Whose is the dirt-covered root vegetable here?"

"Well," John said, in that easy drawl of his, eyes crinkling up at the corners in the way they always did when he was happy, "I didn't want to say—"

Rodney poked him firmly in the chest with his index finger. "My root vegetable is not covered in dirt, John Sheppard!"

A woman who was walking past, her arms filled with great white heads of cauliflower, did a double take. Rodney absolutely didn't flush at that—he was a grown man, with two doctorates and a tenure-track position and a hot ex-Air Force boyfriend with whom he was very proud to do limber-to-moderately-bendy things on a regular basis. He was an adult! He could handle people making assumptions about his, his... root vegetable in public.

"Now, now, Rodney," John said, handing five dollars over to a seller and receiving a carton full of green beans in return. He stowed them away in his grocery bag before turning a rather evil smirk on Rodney. "Not in front of the children."

Rodney spluttered at him. "I—" he said; "_You_—" he pointed out.

"My point exactly," John said, moving on to the next stall where he picked out a small sack of potatoes and handed them over to Rodney. Rodney did _not_, of course, stagger under the weight of them, but he thought it quite possible that these potatoes were denser on a molecular level than regular potatoes. He scowled. Trust John Sheppard to select the mutant starchy tubers when there were perfectly acceptable potatoes to be had.

"But if you behave..." John continued, his voice trailing away significantly as he examined an array of bell peppers. They all looked pretty much identical to Rodney except for their colours—a varied spectrum of hot neon, orange and red and yellow and green—but John hesitated over them until he found ones which inexplicably met with his approval. Rodney found himself staring at the way John's tanned, slim fingers looked against them, and had to clear his own throat to bring himself back to the subject at hand.

"If I behave _what_?" he said, shifting the sack of potatoes from one arm to the other, hoping he sounded appropriately waspish. "I'll have you know that I have very good manners! I have been known to write thank you cards, and advise people on how to properly address the younger sons of earls."

It wasn't an irregular thing, to feel a little grumbly and a lot turned on and a tad peckish when around John (not that a grumbling belly was necessarily related to _John's_ influence, except for the times when they distracted one another and left dinner to bubble over on the stove; though it was true that Rodney had not had breakfast yet because of how he was forced, forced to follow John around on these madcap jaunts, and he was sure his blood sugar levels had something to say about that), but it was hard to maintain the waspish when John looked so summer-warm and slinky and pleased with himself. In fact, it was hard to do a lot of things other than feel kind of stupidly approving and aroused when John was standing around all messy-haired and tanned in the middle of a glory of primary colours, like a picture from a book come to life.

"Well," John said innocently, adding some large brown eggs and pearly mushrooms and fresh creamy milk to their stash, "I'll make you breakfast."

Rodney glared at him. Only John Sheppard could conspire to arrange matters of subtle innuendo such that breakfast—_breakfast_, meal of champions, a repast so glorious that Rodney had occasionally been known to enjoy it twice in one day—would be the less attractive of two possible options.

"In bed," John continued blithely, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

Rodney saw right through that ruse.

"Oh," Rodney breathed, "that's _it_," because trust John to drag him out of his bed and discombobulate him in the midst of _turnips_, trust John to be stupidly hot and his in ways that Rodney wouldn't even have hoped for a year ago, trust John to make Rodney want to kiss him and promise him stupid things before he'd so much as had a mouthful of coffee. There was really nothing else for it—he dropped the stupid bag of stupid mutant potatoes to the ground beside him, pulled John's stupid purple reusable biodegradable grocery tote bag from his hand and left it resting against John's hairy leg.

"You," he told John, fisting his hands in the worn cotton of John's t-shirt, "are a rotten vegetable innuendo distracter."

John laughed against his mouth when Rodney kissed him; and later, when the two of them had been politely asked to leave the Market because such blatant ass-grabbing was not appropriate in such close proximity to the leeks, John's free hand sought out Rodney's, their fingers twining together. "You know," Rodney said, bumping his shoulder against John and feeling unaccountably shy and not a little smug, "this Market thing isn't such a bad idea after all. Maybe we should come back next weekend?", and John's laughter was bright in the midsummer air.


End file.
